Still feeling a little bit sick of excesses of Christmas and the New Year? Are your body and your wallet still feeling the after-effects? Fancy a shinier, greener 2014?

Did the wall to wall TV ads make you think that all those festivities had to cost the earth?

Well. read on. MBF Blogs offer a few pointers.

It is now the case that businesses that keep their focus on green angles from their buildings to their products/services and from communications to how their staff think, are doing well generally and often feature in environmental and business awards.Green Sky Thinking

Most companies claim once the mindset is adjusted it is not difficult to get it right. Stewardship of resources, employing proper technology, recycling, counting the environmental costs and sustainability are the key issues all the time.

If after December you threw away around £60 worth of food, you are not alone. That’s about a meal a day discarded, and we do it all the year round.

It creates costly disposal problems, adds to carbon footprints and costs people actual cash. We’ve all heard the preaching about only cooking what you’ll eat and using up the leftovers.

Faced with endless two-for-one offers from supermarkets and relentless advertising all around us, it seems that we have to break our addictions to consumption one by one, family by family.

But people and businesses can do environmental audits on themselves. On their homes and buildings. Cut fossil fuel dependency with renewables, keep shopping for better energy deals and all that.

Don’t buy what you don’t need. Martin Lewis, the money saving expert has a mantra – Can I afford it? Do I need it? Will I use it?

Practical Ideas

Got some unwanted Christmas presents? Some estimates suggest Britons exchanged £2.4bn worth of unwanted gifts in 2013. You can sell them on eBay or give them to charity shops.

You can try to take them back to the shop your giver bought them from.

One of the best eco ways of offloading the unwanted (free, legal and age-appropriate) is through Freecycle a grassroots organistaion of people who give and get free stuff for their homes. They say, ‘Our goal is to keep usable items out of landfills. By using what we already have on this earth, we reduce consumerism, manufacture fewer goods, and lessen the impact on the earth. Another benefit of using Freecycle is that it encourages us to get rid of junk that we no longer need and promote community involvement in the process.’

You can become a real Green Scrooge by buying discarded bargains now for next year. Wrap with old newspapers or magazines. Shop only locally or from companies whop source locally. Don’t support shops that keep their doors open to warm the street, join the Close the Door Campaign.

Although published back in 2006 (8 Christmases ago), the Friends of the Earth press release suggest useful ways of getting fitter through exercise and diet, things to avoid, how to recycle and improve life quality.

The Environmental Blog carried a really helpful list of realistic ideas from Angie Tarantino in 2011 that are still valid. Resolutions like – stop buying water bottles; stop eating meat (a step too far for many); master recycling and food composting; only carry reusable bags; ditch all toxic cleaners and reconnect yourself and families with nature. Ride your bike, speak up on these issues and take a 7-Day Green Challenge.

The Eco Share Zone is a resource for ideas on how to get and stay fit, combat stress and illness and how to do the daily chores in an eco-friendly manner. It’s about health and wellness.

Variations on most of the environmental and health ideas above are expressed in a different way by Sarah Briggs on The Green Village. The Huffington Post talked about eco-friendly goals for the new year, arguing that changing environmental habits can be more far-reaching than healthy resolutions.